Politics

Starbucks Ditches Jewish Group From Anti-Bias Training Over Non-Support of BLM

Published

3 years ago

May 1, 2018

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL for short), a group dedicated to combatting anti-semitism in the United States has been dropped from an anti-bias training session put on by Starbucks.

The session was due to be put on next month, but the coffee giant faced severe backlash from activists for having ADL as part of the activity, so they’ve opted to boot them from playing a role in developing the training that will be held on May 29.

The reason why?

They don’t support the anti-Semitism coming out of the Black Lives Matter movement.

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Here’s more from The Hill:

Starbucks committed to closing most of its stores for an anti-bias training day after a viral video showed two black men being arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks while waiting for a friend without purchasing anything. The ADL was originally part of the company’s team developing the curriculum for the training.

Activists criticized Starbucks for involving the ADL over the organization’s support for Israel and failure to endorse the Black Lives Matter movement. The group announced in 2016 that it would not fully endorse the movement over some leaders’ “anti-Israel — and at times anti-Semitic — positions.”

Tamika Mallory, an organizer of the Women’s March, posted on Twitter that the ADL is “constantly attacking black and brown people,” and criticized Starbucks as “tone deaf” for involving the group.

Black Lives Matter D.C. accused the ADL of being “ultra pro-cop.”

Starbucks said in an April 24 press release that the ADL would be consulted on “longer-term changes,” but did not name the group or its leaders in the section on the May 29 training.

Riley, the spokeswoman for Starbucks, has denied booting ADL over the pressure the company has received.

So fighting racism and bigotry is only acceptable, praiseworthy, and celebrated so long as the objects of said fight aren’t Jewish? That’s more or less the message being sent by Starbucks’ decision to remove the ADL from the training session.

This may not have been what they intended, but it’s certainly the way it looks.

Not reaching out to this group appears to be a glaring inconsistency in the company’s race policies, but then again, inconsistency is really the only thing consistent about liberalism.